HULME, Edward Wyndham (1859-1954)
Patent Office, later Science Reference Library (BL), 1881-1919 (CL 1894)
The concept of classification based on an actual collection of books rather than on a philosophical plan led Hulme to advocate 'literary warrant' and to devise for the Patent Office a scheme closely comparable to the technology classes of the LC classification. He did much valuable work for the LA including that on book production, cataloguing codes and technical libraries but, above all, and between 1915 and 1926, on the planning and compilation of the Subject index to periodicals, the predecessor of the British humanities and British technology indexes. His daughter, May Evelyn, married Sir Stephen Gaselee (CL Foreign Office).